Turkmenistan, Ashgabat, May 30 / Trend, H. Hasanov /
President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhammadov and Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev, who arrived in the country on a working visit, will hold talks in Ashgabat on Wednesday, the Turkmen government said.
On the eve of the meeting, as local media outlets reported, Berdimuhammadov at a meeting with Russian senior officials stressed that "cooperation with Russian partners has been and remains one of the strategic priorities of Turkmenistan's foreign policy".
According to the Russian side, trade turnover between Russia and Turkmenistan is growing steadily and given gas supplies reached $4.3 billion in 2011.
Strategic direction in the relationship between the two countries is cooperation in fuel and energy complex. Russia received Turkmen gas via the Central Asia - Center (CAC) pipeline through the territory of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Customer is JSC "Gazprom" (Russia), which signed an agreement with Turkmenistan on gas supplies for 25 years in 2003.
At present, the CAC does not operate at full capacity. Russia has reduced gas procurement up to 10 billion cubic meters under the influence of global recession since 2010, which is 4 times less than in 2008.
Russian companies are involved in the development of hydrocarbon resources of Turkmenistan. Russian Itera and "Zarubezhneft" work on one of the blocks in the Caspian Sea shelf under the production sharing agreement.
Turkmenistan in recent years stepped up direct cooperation with Russian regions - Saint Petersburg, Tatarstan, Astrakhan and others.